Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Bob Bashara stood outside his Grosse Pointe Park home after his wife's killing and thanked those who had shown their "love and respect for my Jane."

With his son, Robert Bashara, and his mother nearby, Bashara pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes while he addressed the media on Feb. 1, 2012.

"You were standing right next to him there. Did you see him cry?" Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Moran asked Bob Bashara's son on Thursday.

"No," Robert Bashara replied.

Bashara's son and daughter, ages 26 and 22 respectively, testified during their father's trial in Wayne County Circuit Court. Bashara is facing charges, including first-degree murder, in Jane Bashara's death. Her children told jurors about their parents' relationship, finances and what their father had told them.

"My father only gave more information in response to me finding out new information," Jessica Bashara testified. "Whether it was relating to pornography, whether it was relating to him having affairs."

Bob Bashara initially denied cheating on his wife, his children both testified. They later learned the truth.

When Bashara was in jail in 2012, he spoke to his son by phone and denied that he had harmed Jane Bashara, but admitted he had a relationship with Rachel Gillett, according to a recorded call played in court.

Jessica Bashara referred to Gillett as her father's "girlfriend" while testifying about ring that was a family heirloom belonging to her mother.

"I found out that my father had given it to Rachel Gillett," she testified.

Bob Bashara told his daughter that he kept the ring in a drawer for a year and nobody asked about it, so he figured it wouldn't be missed and gave it to Gillett, Jessica Bashara said.

Prosecutors have said Bob Bashara's relationship with Gillett, his longtime mistress, who participated in BDSM – bondage, discipline, sadomasochism – with him, was the motive for Jane Bashara's death.

Prosecutors contend Bashara had plans for a new life with Gillett and directed his former handyman, Joseph Gentz, to kill his wife. Bashara has repeatedly denied that he had any involvement in his wife's death.

Both of his children said their father had never mentioned Gentz until after the death of their mother, who was strangled and found on Jan. 25, 2012 in the back of her luxury SUV, which had been dumped in Detroit.

"He didn't give an explanation of Joseph Gentz until the media had brought out the name," Jessica Bashara said, speaking in a calm, clear, composed voice throughout her testimony.

She said her father, who called himself a good judge of character, said Gentz needed work and a place to live and he wanted to help him.

Later, her father called Gentz "crazy and sick" and said he killed her mother, Jessica Bashara testified.

She testified that her father told her he "feels guilty every night for being such a terrible judge of character and letting him into our lives."

Bob Bashara told his son he owed Gentz money for handyman work and Gentz was upset about it, Robert Bashara said.

When his son took the stand, Bob Bashara wiped his eyes with a tissue.

Robert Bashara testified his mother had two life insurance policies: one for $90,000 that was paid to him and another one that has not been paid to anyone.

He said he distributed the money: $15,000 to himself, $20,000 to his sister and, at his father's request, $55,000 to his grandmother.

Nobody has received the money in his mother's 401(k), which had $794,535.10 in it at the end of 2011.

Both Jessica and Robert Bashara testified their parents had been to marriage counseling.

Jane Bashara told her daughter she wanted to work on the marriage, but also said that if she and her husband divorced, she hoped to take her 401(k), make a clean break and get her name off his rental properties, Jessica Bashara testified.

Her mom was scared that her 401(k) would be taken because of the debts on the rental properties, she testified.

Beyond finances and marital troubles, Bashara's children were also asked about their father's extramarital affairs.

Prior to her mother's death, Jessica Bashara had seen her father on alt.com, a BDSM website.

"I was very upset by it and voiced my concern to my mother," she testified. "And she was upset that I was upset."

When she asked her father about it, she testified he told her he was on pornographic websites because he had been experiencing erectile dysfunction and wanted to know if the problem was with him or her mother.

Jessica Bashara avoided looking at her father during most of her testimony, but appeared to look at him when the the prosecution played a clip of a TV interview Bob Bashara gave. In it, he said he loves his children and wouldn't do anything to hurt them.